


And All Constants Shall Shift

by debtdoctor



Series: It Shall Sweep Dimensions [4]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Eldritch Abomination Cecil, M/M, Moving Tattoo(s), Possibly Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 21:12:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 1,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1061708
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/debtdoctor/pseuds/debtdoctor
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes the questions you ask are more important than the answers you receive, because the limit of what you can learn is based on what you already know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

He’s beautiful. Carlos knows this abstractly, the way he knows a graph will approach its limits, but never, never touch them.

The way he will never, never touch the high expectations Cecil’s set for him.


	2. Chapter 2

Cecil didn’t fall for Carlos’s perfect, beautiful face.

Although it’s a very lovely face indeed.

No, it was the color of his soul, and the shape of his aura. The way he pulsed and bent and pushed against the lights around him. The way he changed to accommodate the wear and tear of the town’s rolling thrums without losing the essence of what made him recognizable as himself.

So when Cecil is disappointed, when his ideal falls short of reality, it’s merely Carlos’ corners not filling out the overall shape. It is, by no means, the discovery of an unseen hollow, or a previously unknown property of color leaking its way to the surface.

It’s just that Cecil knows Carlos can be better. Better at being himself.


	3. Chapter 3

Carlos suspects Cecil’s different. Well, no. Not different, but something else. Something uniquely Cecil, and it’s not anything Carlos has seen before. It’s not like Cecil’s keeping anything from him. Not on purpose. He’s an open book and Carlos knows if he could just ask the right _questions_ , full disclosure wouldn’t be a problem.

He suspects when Cecil takes this specific sort of deep breath. He can’t describe exactly _how_ it’s different from any other sort of inhale, but it _is_ and he knows it when he sees it.

That sort of reasoning bothers him to no end, but he lives with it.

He lives with it until he starts noticing patterns. Constants. Shifts that shift in the same way in different places.

Cecil inhales in the lab, and it’s that unquantifiable sort of Inhale, and the beakers start to slide off the table, which begins to swell and dip like the rolls of the Sand Wastes.

Carlos can practically see an XYZ coordinate superimposed on the new curves and he races for his drawing implements.

He suspects again as they’re just joking. Teasing each other, curled up on Cecil’s couch. Cecil pokes him with an elbow, and it’s no big deal right up until the tattoo that was giving a very good impression of only being half-inked around Cecil’s wrist lifts, and then snakes around his _own_ arm.

Cecil is only halfway embarrassed, and Carlos thinks this is just a boundary he didn’t know about between them falling down.

Tentacle tattoo touches are okay, but unexpected. Carlos just can’t find the right _questions_. The most informative thing he gets from Cecil about his tattoos is that controlling them is “a little like trying to make your hair behave. Most of the time it works with you, but there are days where nothing you say changes anything.”

The first time they kiss, Carlos sees stars, literal stars and the galaxies they make up, and all the space, the incomprehensible amounts of sheer _space_ between them. The first time they spend the night together without _spending the night together_ , Carlos dreams.

_The void was not void, for it was filled with a Presence beyond imagining. He looked upon it, and fear welled in him as he realised his mistake. Looking teaches, and there are some things no man should know. This was not his place, and he should not have come. A million directions drew on him with such a violence he called out in pain._

_And he knew not how long he screamed, how long he was wrapped amidst the tangled strands, splitting and stretching and snaking through a void so full he felt it should burst._

_The not-a-void turned its attention to him, and he was more than terrified that he had attracted its attention._

_Slowly, achingly, the pull lessened, then reversed._

_He chanced a look at the Thing, and felt the Thing look back at him. Somehow, Carlos knew he was safe._

When he wakes, teary due to sleep-dry eyes, it’s to Cecil kissing his nose.

“You’re very brave, you know,” Cecil whispers.

“Good morning to you too.”


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains the possible pre-slash/second base material. It directly follows the previous chapter, and was only split up so readers who wished to skip any sexual content could do so.

 “You’re very brave, you know,” Cecil whispers.

“Good morning to you too."

Carlos feels a small itch behind his ear, and his hand comes away with one of Cecil’s tattoos settling into the slight bend of his palm.

Cecil giggles a little and Carlos raises his eyebrows in response.

“You don’t mind if I…” he trails off, unsure of how to proceed. He’s never actually seen the full piece, and he’s curious. There have been bits poking out from under Cecil’s shirt collars, and on the rare occasion he leaves his shirt untucked, Carlos has caught glimpses of lines around Cecil’s waist.

Cecil tilts his head to the side, thinks for the half second it takes Carlos to phrase his request, and they speak at the same time.

“Anything you want.”

“Could I see the rest?”

Carlos almost voices the _oh_ running through his mind and is suddenly very thankful his skin hides the light flush he feels across his face.

Cecil smirks as though he can see Carlos blushing anyway, and pulls his nightshirt over his head without getting up.

Carlos is tentative. He plays it safe and starts with the already explored. Cecil's tattoos flow down his arms from somewhere on his back, from over his shoulders, down to curl around his wrists, and Carlos takes the time to trace the ever changing lines up Cecil’s arms, and eventually across his collarbone.

Cecil is more than amenable until Carlos plants a kiss on Cecil’s neck, and then Cecil moves Carlos’s face to his own, and they don’t quite move beyond kissing until Cecil breaks away and curls his fingers around the hem of Carlos’s shirt.

“It’s all right if I-“

“Of course.”

They take a moment to admire each other before Carlos gets back to the original point.

His fingers skim across Cecil’s sides, and the tentacles seem to retreat to Cecil’s back. When Carlos follows one with his nose, Cecil's breathing hitches _quite_ interestingly.   
  
"Ticklish?" Carlos asks.  
  
Cecil glares at him, because Carlos _knows_ he is, and has known since a few days after their first date. Carlos laughs.   
  
They kiss until Cecil smiles back, and then Carlos flips him over.  
  
The artwork is stunning, if a little grotesque. It's similar to two conjoined octopi, sans mantles, spanning the shoulder blades. _Most_ of it wraps around Cecil's arms, but many drip down his back. As he watches, the tentacle-arms look as if they're retracting towards the center masses, then lifting off his skin, to disappear to worlds unknown. Two eyes, one centered on each shoulder blade, blink at Carlos lazily.  
  
Carlos traces the shifting lines, and is rewarded with a "god _fuck_ ” hissed into the pillow. The right eye squints and the membranes ripple, revealing the tip of a beak. Carlos presses a kiss into the nape of Cecil's neck, and then follows the curve of vertebra down his back, laughing again when he discovers a fist sized spot to the left of the lumbar region that makes Cecil jump and squirm and stop breathing altogether.                                                              

And that seems to be the breaking point, because Cecil shifts until he’s sitting up, and then it’s Carlos’s turn to be pushed into the mattress, and yes, that’s something he could get used to.

They kiss again, but now it’s clear this is a small act of revenge on Cecil’s part- payback. He plays dirty. Light touches, like he’s scared to break Carlos, like he’s scared he’ll never be allowed to touch again, followed by scraping fingernails that leave Carlos shaking.

And then Cecil breaks away from the kiss, and moves to hold one of his wrists into the mattress. He starts murmuring into Carlos’s jaw, and he can _feel_ Cecil’s lips moving, and the breath on his skin, and at first he almost misses what Cecil’s saying-

”It’s not _fair_. You get to touch me and _wreck_ me like that…” Cecil bites at Carlos’s neck, just lightly, just a little, and Carlos sighs because he is so, so in trouble, and he can tell.

Cecil’s not using his radio voice. This is different. It’s low and smooth and quickly spoken with the lightest of intonations, and if Cecil weren’t right in his ear, Carlos knows he wouldn’t hear anything intelligible.

It goes straight to his dick and he is so, _so_ in trouble.

Cecil moves his hand off Carlos’s wrist and begins tracing patterns across his chest. Carlos isn’t sure how, but he knows if he looked, he’d have suckers inked on his arm, as if he was still being held. There is no weight, and it would take no effort to move, if he wanted to.

He doesn’t.

Then alarm goes off, announcing they now _really_ have to wake.

“I’m saving this,” Cecil announces, squinting accusingly as he straightens up. Carlos bites the inside of his cheek to keep from smiling at the chastising tone.

Carlos hits the snooze button, and pulls Cecil to lie down. They’re quiet for a few minutes, curled in on each other, and Carlos just breathes in, and out, eyes closed,  head on Cecil’s collarbone. Cecil threads his fingers through Carlos’ hair, and, just once, kisses his forehead. By the time Cecil kicks Carlos out of bed, insisting that they _have_ to get moving, Cecil’s tattoos are more or less in their usual spots. Carlos gets a grin in response to his grumbles about getting up, and for some reason that makes it all right.


	5. Chapter 5

The third time they spend the night together, Carlos remembers what he dreams. He remembers the contradictory void-full-to-bursting. He makes the mistake of comparing it to the graph of his table, and a future version of himself points to this moment and highlights it as Important.

Carlos is not a mathematician. He’s not a mathematician, but he knows the equation of the graph of his table is not supposed to fit in with the mathematical certainties the twists his dream-void presents.

He continues to watch the constants emerge when Cecil Inhales. He watches things bend when they shouldn’t, and comes to the conclusion that Cecil is the unifying vertex of an incredibly complex formula.

He tries to ask why it happens, once. He asks why space seems to bend around him. They’re at Big Rico’s, and it seems appropriate conversation for an invisible gluten-free pizza pie.

Cecil draws his mouth into a thin line. “Promise you’ll let me know if it’s ever too much? I know it’s hard for some people to look at, and I _can_ tone it down, if I know I need to.”

Carlos promises.

So no, he doesn’t know exactly what Cecil is. But he suspects.


End file.
